Lifting a Heaven Burden

The inspiring story of a Muslim weightlifter who never gave up on her dream

Kulsoom Abdullah is an American born Muslim with deep roots in Pakistan and a PhD holding graduate of Georgia Tech. She is kind, honest, and extremely talented.

She is also a weightlfter who was denied the right to compete because of the modest way she dresses.

For Kulsoom, athletics seemed out of reach from the start. “I didn’t know where I could go or how to do it, it was hard to know what sports to be involved in” she told me in an interview. As a Muslim woman in the southern United States it was difficult to find out which sports would accommodate her religious practice of modest dress. While a graduate student she discovered a Taekwondo class, but had concerns about how to practice her faith while competing. She asked if her traditional Muslim dress would be a problem and if she could choose not to work directly with men in her class. The teacher was extremely accommodating, a response which became an all too rare part of her story.

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Kulsoom excelled at Taekwondo and ascended to the rank of black belt, but she found herself wanting to grow stronger. It was then that she discovered free weights and fell for, she says, “the “speed, the power, and the technique” of Olympic weightlifting. She had discovered the weightlifting style via the internet, but the coaches at her gym refused to teach it to her for fear that she would hurt herself.

Not to be deterred, she discovered Crossfit, a specialized gym with coaches who take part in weightlifting competitions. Kulsoom joined and began to grow stronger, finally competing in local competitions in March of 2010. In October. A mere 9 months later, Kulsoom was ready to compete nationally. Both she and her coaches did not foresee any problem with her competing while wearing her unique hijab-based uniform. To her recollection, “this was a case where nobody had ever asked before, everyone just wore the singlet.” With the competition in December, Kulsoom received an answer from the committee.